U-M Student Task Force Report: “University failed to meet ‘recommended 60-day period of time’ between sexual misconduct complaints and school investigations”

By The Ann Arbor Independent Editorial Team Last updated Apr 25, 2014 0

Student Task Force alleges football coach Brady Hoke “knowingly issued false statements in December 2013 concerning the status of Gibbons.”

ACCORDING TO A report released on Monday April 14 by the U-M Central Student Government, Michigan officials failed to explain a several year delay between the alleged sexual assault of a student by a former Wolverines football player and that player’s expulsion last December. A student task force from Michigan’s CSG examined the case surrounding former kicker Brendan Gibbons, who was expelled from the university in December following his alleged involvement in a reported sexual assault on Nov. 22, 2009, when Gibbons was a freshman.

Per a January report from the Michigan Daily surrounding Gibbons’ dismissal, a university document connected Gibbons to the alleged sexual assault in November. The 54-page report is titled “Investigation of the August 2013 Sexual Misconduct Policy.” The Task Force consisted of three members:

Bobby Dishell, Vice President of the Central Student Government. Dishell chaired the Central Student Government Task Force to investigate the Office of Student Conflict Resolution’s implementation of the 2013 Sexual Misconduct Policy.

Jeremy Keeney, Student General Counsel for the Central Student Government. Keeney is also the member of the task force appointed to review confidential Office of Student Conflict Resolution (OSCR) files.

Meagan Shokar, Speaker of the Assembly for the Central Student Government.

The report was prepared to “make the University of Michigan a safer place for all students by increasing transparency in University decision-making…The CSG Task Force is committed to protecting survivors of sexual misconduct.”

According to a March editorial published in The Indy:

“College campuses are dangerous places for American women. According to figures from a U.S. Department of Justice study, 25 percent of college women will be victims of rape or attempted rape before they graduate within a four-year college period, and that women between the ages of 16 to 24 will experience rape at a rate that’s four times higher than the assault rate of all women. The DOJ data also reveal that 95 percent of rapes on college campuses go unreported.

“Dr. Mary Sue Coleman’s legacy includes the hiring of multi-disciplinary faculty, the expansion of the college’s facilities, its endowment and its undergraduate population. DOJ figures suggest another of Dr. Coleman’s legacies: the attempted and/or completed rapes of 44,998 of the 179,992 undergraduate women admitted to the University of Michigan between 2005 and 2013. The Centers for Disease Control puts the percentage of undergraduate women who experience attempted and/or completed rape at 19 percent, or 34,198 Michigan undergraduate women.”

Anger about the handling of the investigation of an alleged rape of a University of Michigan undergraduate by a U-M football player boiled over in the opinion pages of The Michigan Daily student newspaper in 2013. In October 2013, Michigan Daily columnist Katie Steen wrote a piece titled, “Rape culture is real.”

Steen writes, “In the Gibbons police reports, it’s written, ‘(Gibbons) stated his whole life will probably get ruined, and that the girl always wins.’ Let’s make one thing clear: The girl does not always win….Rape culture is real, and it’s important to be mindful of how we’re participating, even if it’s just as spectators.”

In September 2013 Michigan Daily writer Emma Maniere published an opinion piece in which she writes, “Another day, another male college athlete accused of sexual assault. The Washtenaw Watchdog recently posted the story of senior placekicker Brendan Gibbons’ 2009 alleged rape charges. Outside of the Washtenaw Watchdog and Jezebel though, coverage has been lacking.”

The Ann Arbor Independent revealed on March 15, 2014 that former AnnArbor.com sports writer Dave Birkett alleged in Tweets that his effort to report on the incident in 2009 was thwarted by his own newspaper. Doug Smith, who worked for four years to force an investigation of the alleged rape, says that he was told by AnnArbor.com editors that since Gibbons was never charged, the newspaper could not justify printing a story about the allegations.

While the CSG Task Force report doesn’t delve into the lack of media coverage, it does meticulously dissect U-M’s pre- and post-2011 Sexual Misconduct policies. Then, the report addresses what Department of Education officials suggest is the crux of that agency’s investigation: “Did…any person employed by the University, intentionally delay the completion of the investigation of the allegations of sexual misconduct against Brendan Gibbons until late Fall of 2013?”

The Task Force findings are unambiguous in their criticism of U-M officials’ investigation of the sexual assault allegations and application of the 2013 Sexual Misconduct policy:

“The CSG Task Force finds that University failed to explain the four-year delay between Brendan Gibbons’s conduct and the permanent separation.

“Despite a statement by President Coleman that she is ‘very comfortable with the processes and what happened,’ University officials erroneously relied on FERPA to deny requests for information regarding procedures followed in the Gibbons case. Second, the CSG Task Force finds that the University failed to investigate third-party complaints of Gibbons’s conduct within sixty days of receiving the complaint.

“Third, the CSG Task Force believes Brady Hoke knowingly issued false statements in December 2013 concerning the status of Gibbons. First, University officials claimed that FERPA and University policies protect information regarding procedures followed in the Gibbons case from disclosure. A brief review of FERPA forecloses this argument because FERPA explicitly allows the University to disclose the final results of disciplinary proceedings when a student is found responsible for a non-forcible sex offense.”

The report reveals that while U-M’s 2013 Sexual Misconduct policy called for investigations into alleged sexual misconduct to be conducted within 60 days, there was only one staff member assigned to conduct the investigations. While the final 2013 Sexual Misconduct policy made it easier for students to report sexual misconduct, and significantly increased the number of allegations made by students, U-M’s Office of Student Conflict Resolution was unable to investigate allegations in a timely manner because there was initially one staff member assigned to do so.

While U-M officials eventually realized that one staff member was not sufficient to investigate all claims within 60 days, the Task Force report says, “The University did not hire the second investigator until more than a year after it should have realized that one investigator was not sufficient.”

The Task Force offers up a number of recommendations. Among them are:

Encourage the Office of Student Conflict Resolution and the Office of Institutional Equity to review every case of sexual misconduct that occurred prior to the adoption of the interim Sexual Misconduct Policy, but was investigated under either the interim or final Sexual Misconduct Policy, to ensure that every student found responsible for sexual misconduct was found responsible under the version of the Statement in effect when the conduct occurred. Neither new evidence nor survivor participation is needed for this review.

Encourage the Office of Student Conflict Resolution and the Office of Institutional Equity to issue a report after the above review is complete. The report should include actions taken both before and after the review, but under no circumstances should it include personal information about the survivor.

Work with the Office of Student Conflict Resolution, the Office of Institutional Equity, and the Athletic Department to develop clear and published policies regarding when and what student-athlete disciplinary information should be shared between the different departments.

Work with the Ann Arbor Police Department, University of Michigan Police Department, OSCR, and OIE to establish written policies to govern when each department should share information regarding student conduct, and define what information should be shared.

In 2008, Eastern Michigan University said today that it would pay $350,000 to the U.S. Department of Education for violating the Clery Act, the federal law that requires colleges and universities to disclose information about crimes on their campuses and to warn students and employees of threats to their safety.

The department initially fined the university $357,500 for violating the law on 13 counts, including a failure to alert the campus after the murder of a student, Laura Dickinson, in December 2006.

Eastern Michigan officials appealed the fine, pointing out improvements they had made to campus safety since the department’s investigation. The fine remains the largest levied under the Clery Act since it was passed, in 1990.

In 2011, U-M was selected by the Department of Education for a random examination of its crime statistics. Errors were found in the university’s crime reporting, and officials were required to restate their crime statistics and to inform staff and students of the error.

While the Department of Education informed Dr. Mary Sue Coleman that it would be investigating the university’s handling of the allegations of sexual misconduct made against Brendan Gibbons, any findings would not be a Clery Act violation, but rather discrimination of the basis of sex.